<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Shawn Spencer's Softest Cells by huckleberryzenon</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541968">Shawn Spencer's Softest Cells</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/huckleberryzenon/pseuds/huckleberryzenon'>huckleberryzenon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Psych (TV 2006)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Also The Lizzie McGuire Movie, And The Conehead Movie Too, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I guess Shawn whump? he is fine tho, I just know that Shawn definitely would, I was going to make this gay but then I was like "but i love shawn and juliet tho", Lethal Weapon is referenced a lot even though I don't know the plot of those movies, also a silly Psych fic about Lassie singing "Tainted Love" at THAT, am i tagging right, bro what am I doing writing my first fanfic in the year of Our Lord 2020, but it's trapped in my monkey brain i had to write it, i guess?, i've definitely read this exact fic somewhere else, idk they talk about Mel Gibson a lot i don't know why, if it helps i dont understand half the things i write either, oh well, only because I make a Groot joke but I think it was probably too early for Groot jokes, that is not to say that I do not also love Shassie, the timeline makes no sense but like that's okay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:48:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,993</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541968</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/huckleberryzenon/pseuds/huckleberryzenon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer hadn’t made a "Lethal Weapon" joke in seventeen minutes.<br/>In fact, he hadn’t made any jokes at all. If Lassiter were the type of person to worry about Shawn Spencer, fake-psychic-slash-all-around-major-pain-in-Lassister’s-ass, he would find the lack of crass pop-culture references deeply concerning. But he was not, so...</p><p>A.K.A., Shawn gets shot accidentally with only Lassie and a former-umbrella-seller-slash-current-drug-dealer for company. Soft Cell is more relevant than they have been since 1986.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Burton "Gus" Guster &amp; Shawn Spencer, Carlton Lassiter &amp; Shawn Spencer, Juliet O'Hara/Shawn Spencer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>151</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Shawn Spencer's Softest Cells</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Okay, so I literally cannot believe that after YEARS of refusing to write fanfic, I choose now, the year 2020, to cave. But also, it makes sense that quarantine would drive me to this level of insanity. So, here this is, I guess. also i hope you cannot tell how much I have never seen a "Lethal Weapon" movie. And also hope you can't tell how much I don't know anything about gunshot wounds or about how law enforcement works but like why should i i am here to write about a fake psychic whomst i adore, and also ACAB. So, apologies.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Spencer hadn’t made a <em>Lethal Weapon</em> joke in seventeen minutes.</p><p>In fact, he hadn’t made any jokes at all. If Lassiter were the type of person to worry about Shawn Spencer, fake-psychic-slash-all-around-major-pain-in-Lassister’s-ass, he would find the lack of crass pop-culture references deeply concerning. But he was not, so instead he took out his phone to dial O’Hara’s number for the sixth time in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, he peeked around the perimeter of the Shadow Company’s warehouse where he and Spencer were holed up, awaiting backup for the past hour.</p><p>“They’re literally called the Shadow Company, Lassie,” Spencer had told him, breathless, just after Lassiter had knocked over a crate to incapacitate the bad guy, only to find Spencer slouched awkwardly against one of the large crates that were supposed to be filled with the Shadow Company’s particular brand of weatherproof umbrellas but were, to Shawn’s credit and Lassiter’s irritation, actually filled with enough methamphetamine to supply Coachella twice over. “It’s like they were like, ‘just how can we hint at our secret evildoing?’ Of course, I want to say that this makes me Mel Gibson, but it actually might make me Danny Glover.” Shawn had paused, sucking in a breath. Lassiter noticed he was holding himself awkwardly, still slouched against the crates, hand clutched to his side. Lassister suspected Skraggs, the CEO of Shadow Company, had roughed Spencer up a bit, judging by the purple bruise already forming on Spencer’s cheek and how uncharacteristically still he was—usually Spencer would be hopping up and down by this point, especially if someone had just stopped the bad guy. He figured Spencer might have broken a rib or two—he should let O’Hara know to bring paramedics with her—Skraggs would need one, too. He pulled out his phone to text his partner.</p><p>Carlton was still clutching his gun, scanning for any other Shadow Company goons, though he wasn’t sure what they would do when they saw Skraggs lying unconscious near Spencer’s feet, or even if Skraggs had brought any backup with him when Spencer had foolishly asked him to meet up here. After a few moments of silence, he raised his gun to rest position by his head, and decided he should probably check on Spencer—Guster and O’Hara would be upset if their friend was banged up and they found out Lassiter hadn’t even asked if he was alright. He was supposed to be an officer of the law, after all—even if he had to serve and protect someone as annoying as Spencer.</p><p>“Eh, doesn’t quite work. If Gus were here, he would never let me be Danny Glover. But I don’t want to be the kidnapped daughter. Or Hunsacker. Maybe I am Mel Gibson, if he was more like his character in <em>Maverick</em>. Or maybe this is more <em>Die Hard</em>. You dropping from the vents was pretty McClane—”</p><p>“I didn’t drop from the vents. I dropped from the top of a crate.” Lassier knelt next to Spencer, checking him for injuries.</p><p>“Tornado, potato, Orlando, commando, as the French say, Lassie. Anyways, obviously Skraggs is Hans Grubber, and frankly I would be honored to be Holly—OW!” Spencer yelped as soon as Lassiter began probing his side.</p><p>Lassiter raised an eyebrow. “Move your hand. Even if it’s just bruising, I’d better look.”</p><p>Lassiter went to remove Spencer’s hand, and Shawn slapped his hand away.</p><p>“It hurts, Lassie!”</p><p>“Of course it does, you idiot, you probably broke a—” Lassiter’s sentence broke off once he saw the blood on Spencer’s shirt.</p><p>“Spencer, is that a gunshot wound?”</p><p>Spencer rolled his eyes, though Lassiter noticed his voice sounded tighter than usual. “Almost definitely yes, Lassie. Unless someone poked me with a very weird and small sapling seed that has now disappeared inside my body, and which will perhaps—” Shawn broke off into a wracking cough. “—Which will perhaps begin growing inside me into a tree, turning me into the surprisingly noirish origin story for Groot.”</p><p>Lassiter decided to ignore the nonsense. “But I didn’t see Skragg’s gun go off.”</p><p>Shawn chuckled breathlessly. “To be fair to him, I don’t think he meant to shoot me. I think it went off accidentally when you and that crate full of party drugs fell on him.”</p><p>Shit. Juliet was going to kill him. He took off his suit jacket with one hand, and pulled his phone out with the other. He balled up his jacket and pressed it firmly against Spencer’s wound, making the injured man yelp. “Goddammit, Spencer, now I have to call O’Hara. Why didn’t you bring Guster with you?”</p><p>“Well, someone had to go get you and Jules! How was I supposed to know I would run into you in the Red Robin parking lot?”</p><p>Lassiter was already on the phone with Juliet. She picked up after the first ring. He could practically feel the worry rolling off her through the phone. “Carlton—shit—there’s a three-car pileup on the 101—we’re jammed up. I called the paramedics, but they’re about ten minutes behind me and Gus—it’s looking like we won’t get there for another twenty minutes, at least—are you and Shawn okay? Is Skraggs there?”</p><p>“I have Skraggs in custody. He’s unconscious—but we’re going to want to call in Narcotics, too, maybe even the DEA. Spencer was right about the drugs op, after all.”</p><p>“Got it.” Lassiter knew his partner was already preparing for the several phone calls she would have to make once this one ended, but he didn’t think she’d forget—</p><p>“But what about Shawn? Are the paramedics for Skraggs?”</p><p>“Uh—” Lassiter wasn’t sure how to explain to O’Hara that he was currently getting her secret boyfriend’s blood all over his best suit jacket, especially because Lassiter was actively pretending that his junior detective and the consulting psychic were not, in fact, seeing each other.</p><p>“I’m okay, Jules!” Shawn shouted, too loudly, towards Lassiter’s phone, the hand that wasn’t actively holding Lassiter’s jacket against his bleeding side grabbing for the phone. Lassiter repressed his impulse to slap Spencer upside the head. Courtesy due only to the gunshot wound that Lassiter felt more than slightly responsible for, of course.</p><p>“Shawn,” Juliet sighed, relief flooding her voice. “What the hell were you thinking?”</p><p>“Well, mostly I was thinking about the filmic choices of Richard Donner—like, Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson? Together? Patrick Stewart as a villain? Completely unbelievable.”</p><p>“Roberts and Gibson are great together in <em>Conspiracy Theory,</em> Shawn, you just can’t recognize sexual chemistry when it’s right in front of you,” Guster interrupted, cutting off whatever reasonable answer Juliet might have had in response.</p><p>Shawn smiled tiredly. “Gus! The only person Mel Gibson has ever had sexual chemistry with is—”</p><p>“Pocahantas when he was the voice of John Smith,” Shawn and Gus finished together.</p><p>“Shawn, I know, but what in the hell—” Gus began.</p><p>“Gus, buddy, I need you to not freak out, but I need to take a quick second.”</p><p>Lassiter felt as alarmed as Guster sounded. “Second? Second for, what, Shawn? What’s happening?”</p><p>But Shawn was leaning his head back against the crate behind him, his eyes squeezed shut. He was, Lassiter noticed, several shades whiter than usual. Lassiter took the phone back from Spencer’s outstretched hand. “Guster, it’s Lassiter. Shawn was shot in the side—but as you know, he’s conscious, and he’s going to be fine.”</p><p>“Ohmygod, ohmyGOD—”</p><p>“Carlton?” Juliet’s voice cut through Gus’s panic, her own worry sharpening her words. “Carlton, I’m going to hang up so I can let the paramedics know. Make sure you keep pressure on the wound, okay? I’ll call you when I have updates.”</p><p>“Got it, O’Hara.”</p><p>There was a pause, during which Lassiter expected her to hang up.</p><p>“And will you tell Shawn—”</p><p>“You will tell Spencer whatever it is when you see him in twenty minutes,” Lassiter replied, both wanting to avoid what was probably going to be an emotional confession that he wanted nothing to do with, and also to end the call to focus his attention on Spencer, who was looking mostly unconscious—he had probably lost more blood than Lassiter had realized, and he wasn’t equipped to deal with a Shawn Spencer going into shock while simultaneously trying to keep Spencer’s girlfriend and best friend calm. He hung up the phone. He would see them in twenty minutes. Probably.</p><p>Spencer’s head lolled onto his shoulder. Try to keep him awake, right? That’s what you did with people who got shot?</p><p>Lassiter slapped Spencer’s cheeks, trying to rouse him. “Spencer—hey, Spencer, rise and shine.” He pressed harder down on Spencer’s wound, hoping the added pressure would simultaneously stop the bleeding and shock Spencer awake.</p><p>It sort of worked—after a minute, Spencer jolted awake, blinking rapidly. Confusion filled his eyes, and his pupils looked dilated—different from Spencer’s normally sharp, frighteningly attentive gaze.</p><p>“Lassie?” Not slurred, but, again, not as quick as usual.</p><p>“You’re going to be alright, Spencer. You were shot, and passed out for a couple minutes. Help will be here soon.”</p><p>Shawn moaned. “Oh God, I’m Joe Pesci in the second movie, aren’t I?”</p><p>Lassiter paused for a moment. “You could be Butters.”</p><p>Shawn looked at him like he’d just asked him to go fishing with his father. “I am not Butters. I am in no way Butters. I am not a fourth movie Gibson-from-the-first-movie—ah!—replacement.” Shawn gasped in pain.</p><p>“Alright, you’re Joe Pesci.”</p><p>There was a pause, which, if he hadn’t gathered it before, solidified the certainty that something was definitely wrong with the smooth-talking psychic—Lassiter was quite sure that a picture of Shawn Spencer was the only antonym found for “quiet” in the dictionary.</p><p>“You know, Lassie, I actually think this hurts less than the first time.”</p><p>“What, with that whole Longmore business?” That had been a stressful few hours for Lassiter, himself—what with Henry Spencer taking control of his investigation into the kidnapping of his annoying psychic sort-of friend, who, it turned out, he actually preferred in his annoying state, not shot and kidnapped somewhere.</p><p>Shawn just nodded, his eyes squeezed shut again.</p><p>“Stay awake, Spencer.”</p><p>Shawn nodded again, but stayed silent. His breathing grew more rapid, but stayed even—Lassiter decided that was a good sign.</p><p>And that’s how they spent the next seventeen minutes—Spencer with his eyes squeezed shut, Lassiter with his hands on Shawn’s wound, or trying to get a hold of Juliet, who kept sending him right to voicemail. Occasionally Lassiter would ask Spencer if he was alright, and Spencer would respond in the affirmative, and Lassiter could admit to himself that it was scaring the hell out of him.</p><p>“Spencer, what’s the big line from that movie?”</p><p>One of Spencer’s eyes squeaked open. “What?”</p><p>“The line. From the movie. The Mel Gibson one.”</p><p>“<em>Pocahantas?</em> I know—ah—you know all the words to—ow—’Colors of the Wind,’ Lassie,” Shawn said, and Lassiter laughed, full-out, which he had sworn never to do at one of Spencer’s idiotic jokes, but he couldn’t deny the relief he felt that things weren’t so dire for Spencer that he lost his sense of humor, after all.</p><p>“I’m glad you’re here, Riggs,” Shawn gasped. Eyes closed once more, he scrambled out his hand, reaching for—Lassiter’s hand.</p><p>“Maybe we should register you as the lethal weapon, Spencer,” Lassiter said, because it was the nicest thing he felt he could say without entirely violating his morals.</p><p>Spencer squeezed his hand. “That’s a little on the nose, dude.”<br/>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>Shawn didn’t feel too good.</p><p>In fact, he wasn’t feeling much of anything at all—he felt disconnected from his body, floating above it a little, the only thing grounding him the sharp pressure Lassie-face was applying to his right side.</p><p>Though, that was a bit of a lie, too—he could feel how hard it was getting to breathe, which was a little ridiculous, considering it’s the one thing Shawn was absolutely certain his body knew how to do. And his eyes felt heavier than Meryl Streep’s entire award’s shelf. Hence his whole “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” moment with Lassie. But he could excuse his sentimentality, because he was feeling at least partly dead. That made him all feel all sorts of cuddly for everyone around him, even the unconscious drug dealer on the ground next to him.</p><p>“Do you want me to sing a song?” Lassiter asked out of the blue, though Shawn couldn’t be sure how much time had passed since they’d last spoken. Also on the list of things Shawn couldn’t be sure about was whether Lassie had really asked that question at all.</p><p>“What?” He asked, and he sounded not-all-there even to himself.</p><p>“I don’t know, Spencer, I’m just trying to think what Guster would do if he were here,” Lassie snapped, sounding much more like his usual self.</p><p>“Sing for me, Paolo,” Shawn muttered, wondering what the <em>Lizzie McGuire</em> movie was doing so near the surface of his subconscious mind. “Hey now, Hey now…” he muttered. He was feeling very spinny. A little too spinny. He might spin away.</p><p>“Sometimes I feel I’ve got to run away…” A gruff voice sang. “I’ve got to..get away...um, from the something something in the heart of me. The, uh, love we share seems to go nowhere...and I’ve lost my light for I toss and turn--I can’t sleep at night…”</p><p>No. No. That couldn’t be right. There is no way God would sing acapella Soft Cell at the Gates of Heaven. And even if He did, God would get the words right. Everyone knew the words to “Tainted Love.” Even the dad conehead from <em>The Coneheads</em> movie knew all the words.</p><p>“What the..what the fuck?” Another gruff voice asked. Shawn was glad he had asked, because he wanted to know himself, but opening his mouth and asking seemed like way more work than he could handle at the moment.</p><p>Shawn felt something shift next to him, eliciting a groan. Ouch, for a second there he had entirely forgotten that he had a body that hurt. “Stay where you are, Skraggs. Backup will be here any second. There’s no point in running.”</p><p>The second voice—Skraggs?—spoke again, sounding nervous. “Hey, man, no need to point that thing at me. I’m not going anywhere with my busted ankle.” There was a pause, or maybe Shawn had passed out, but either way he heard another question that surprised him. “Is he...is he okay?”</p><p>“I don’t think so.” The worry in the first voice—Lassie, he was pretty sure—surprised him. Lassie’s next words were an angry growl. “But for your sake, he better be. If he dies, I will personally ensure you never see anything outside of a cell in Lompoc ever again.”</p><p>Wow. Lassie sounded mad. Even in whatever distant, loopy level of consciousness he was living in, Shawn knew that that was kind of surprising. He always knew Lassie loved him, deep, deep down...but he always figured it was so deep, he would need a lot of scuba gear to reach it. Maybe even a submarine. They were talking Mariana trench-level deep. Like, where grotesque fish wore lamps on their heads deep.</p><p>“Hey, man, I didn’t mean to shoot him—I was just gonna lock him in the storage room until I crossed state lines. I would’ve called in his location after I’d gotten out of the country, for sure.”</p><p>Well. That was sort of nice to hear, at least. What a polite umbrella-seller-slash-drug dealer! And here Shawn had been thinking he was spectacularly, cartoonishly evil. Maybe he should have just called it in, after all, instead of insisting on coming down here himself, with just Lassie in tow. Nah, but really, what else was he going to do with an entity genuinely calling itself the Shadow Company?</p><p>Shawn was startled from this train of thought by a slap to his face, which sent his thoughts ping-ponging around his mind. His eyelids, still heavy, blinked half-open. “Huh?” He mumbled.</p><p>“You better be staying awake for this, Spencer.”</p><p>“Is that why you were singing to him earlier? To try and keep him awake?” Skraggs asked.</p><p>“Conehead,” Shawn mumbled, blinking at Lassie’s worry-lined face. He reached up to pat the top of Lassie’s head. Not a conehead, after all. Lassie swatted his hand away.</p><p>“I was not singing to him earlier,” Lassie said, his voice tight. Shawn could see a gun, pointed at Skraggs, in Lassie’s hand. The other hand was still pressing on his side, which felt sticky. It stung terribly, too, no doubt, but Shawn was doing his darndest to ignore the waves of pain rolling through his body. It was easier to be grossed out by the stickiness.</p><p>“You so were, man. It was 'Tainted Love.' Here, I can help, too—” Skraggs cleared his throat, before picking up where Lassie had left off. To Shawn’s surprise, Skragg’s had the voice of a former-’90s-boy-band-member-angel. “Once I ran to you, now I run from you...this tainted love you’ve given, I give you all a boy could give you, Take my tears and that’s not nearly all…”</p><p>“Tainted love,” chimed in Lassie, reluctantly.</p><p>“Oh, tainted love, now I know I’ve got to—”</p><p>“Bum! Bum!” Shawn muttered half heartedly. He didn’t sound nearly as much like an ‘80s synth as he usually did.</p><p>“Run away, I’ve got to—”</p><p>“Bum! Bum!” Shawn muttered, slightly more enthusiastically.</p><p>“Get away, you don’t really want anymore from me,” Skraggs sang.</p><p>“To make things right,” Lassie’s baritone, to Shawn’s delight, paired wonderfully with Skragg’s tenor.</p><p>“You need someone to hold you tight,” the drug dealer and Head Detective sang together, and Shawn thought, So this is what dying’s like. “And you think love is to prey, but I’m sorry I don’t pray that way.”</p><p>“Once I ran to you, now I run from you, this tainted—”</p><p>“SBPD! Hands in the air!”</p><p>Shawn could only really register that the singing had stopped. He was a little put-out, as he wanted the song to finish before he succumbed to his heroically fatal wound. Though he kind of wished Juliet was here to—</p><p>“Shawn? Shawn? Are you okay?”</p><p>“Jules!” He mumbled, and pushed his eyelids all the way open this time, to see his girlfriend’s face hovering above his. “Hi.”</p><p>Juliet promptly burst into tears, which made Shawn sad, so he lifted his hand to her face. She buried her face in his hand.</p><p>“Shawn…” And Gus was there, too! It was like Christmas.</p><p>“Gus..you..” He stuttered.</p><p>“Shawn, paramedics are five minutes away. It’s fine, you’re going to be fine,” Gus’ mouth said, even though Shawn knew Gus’ face better than his own, and Gus’ face was telling him that Shawn did not look like he was going to be fine.</p><p>“Buddy...you missed it. Soft Cell was…”—Shawn took breath—“Soft Cell was here. And God didn’t even know all the words.”</p><p>And now Gus was crying too, and Shawn would offer him his other hand to bury his face in, except his other hand was currently working with Lassie to stop his side from bleeding out.</p><p>“Those are sirens,” Skraggs said, and Shawn could sort of see him sitting against the crate behind Jules. Even Skraggs looked like he was crying, but that was probably Shawn hallucinating.</p><p>“You sing like Timberlake’s sweet baby,” Shawn tried to tell him, but all that came out was “Timberbaby.” He was pretty sure Skraggs knew what he was trying to say, though.</p><p>“Paramedics are here. They’re going to want to move him quickly, O’Hara, he’s lost a lot of blood,” Lassie said, his face looming large above him. At some point—Shawn didn’t know when—Shawn’s torso had ended up in Lassie’s lap, his head awkwardly laying across Lassie’s left thigh.</p><p>Shawn felt rather than saw Juliet nod, and she leaned to give his cheek a kiss, placing his hand in Gus.’ Gus gave it a squeeze. Jules stood and went over to Skraggs, and Shawn realized that she was officially arresting him.</p><p>Then the paramedics came in, and one looked like his mother and kept trying to make jokes with him while she and her co-worker lifted him onto a wheeled stretcher and moved him to an ambulance, and Shawn tried to smile to show her that he appreciated her sense of humor. The only thing Shawn knew as he felt himself slip back into unconsciousness was the steady squeeze of Gus’ hand in his.<br/>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>After the barely lucid Spencer and the panicking Guster were loaded off into the ambulance, Lassiter went over to his partner, who was sitting, shell-shocked, in the cruiser with Skraggs and McNabb. McNabb looked like he was jabbering at O’Hara, who just kept nodding absently in response.</p><p>“O’Hara,” he said, watching his partner flinch to attention. “You’re going to take my car to the hospital, and I’ll take the cruiser with McNabb and book Scraggs.”</p><p>“You’re covered in blood, Carlton,” she said.</p><p><em>His</em> blood, she meant.</p><p>“Go to the hospital,” he said slowly, and ruffled through his blood-soaked suit jacket for his keys. Once he found them, he placed them firmly in Juliet’s hand. She looked him in the eyes, hard, and nodded, before moving off to Lassiter’s Crown Vic.</p><p>McNabb stared at him, looking like someone just pissed in his rose garden.</p><p>“In the car, McNabb!” he growled, and felt a bit more like himself again.<br/>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>Booking Skragg took longer than expected, and writing out his statement to Vick took even longer. His shirt was still covered in Spencer’s blood, which he was trying not to think about. He had an extra one he kept in his car in case of emergencies, but his car was at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.</p><p>He had McNabb drop him off at the hospital. When he walked into the waiting room, he spotted O’Hara, Guster, and the older Spencer immediately—they were sitting together in somber silence, each of them slumped together. Lassiter walked up to them, and Gus startled when he noticed.</p><p>“Detective,” Henry began, staring at his blood-covered shirt. Lassiter decided to ignore the horror spelled across his face, to ignore the fact that he could have been the last person to see Henry’s son alive if things had gone even worse. He ignored it all.</p><p>“Can I have my keys, O’Hara? I have an extra shirt in the car.”</p><p>“Oh!” she exclaimed, and pulled his keys out of her pocket to give to him.</p><p>He turned to walk away, but then faced the three people on the chairs in front of him, feeling he had to say something else, but he wasn’t sure what. What came out of his mouth was, “I’ll be back.”</p><p>No one said anything about Lassie’s accidental Scwharzenegger reference. To his surprise, he genuinely wished Spencer was there to tease him about it.<br/>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>When he came back, new shirt on, everyone was smiling. And that was because, it turned out, the doctor had come out to say that while it was too early to be entirely certain, Shawn’s surgery had gone well.</p><p>He was going to be fine.<br/>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>Obviously Shawn was totally fine. Well, totally fine once he’d actually woken up after a full twenty-four hours being comatose, and once he’d been given a delightful amount of drugs, and once Gus had smuggled him a smoothie from Jamba Juice down the road, and once his father had his soft little I’m-not-crying-about-my-fake-psychic-son-you’re-crying-about-my-fake-psychic-son moment, and once Juliet had shown him some special bedside care, and once McNabb had personally dropped off a “Get Well Soon” card that Skraggs had sent from Lompoc.</p><p>The only thing that was really troubling him was how he was going to get Lassie’s phone off him while he was still technically bed-ridden. There was a very important recording on it of a Soft Cell cover that Shawn needed immediately.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>